Baseball is Here!! MLB 2012!!!!

[snoopy369]

Sorry, not the same in my mind. Triple crown are all categories that bear directly on the results of games, not talking about triples and singles and whatnot. RBIs, home runs, batting average - all pretty important stats, and indicative of the best hitter in baseball. In particular, combining the highest number of hits with the best power numbers is pretty significant; not too many people can hit for power AND average. You can of course suggest OBP for this stat instead of average, but there is some value in average that statheads often forget - if you are the power/RBI guy in the lineup, your team is better off if you can get more hits

[snoopy369]

Add on the fact that he got better as the race got tighter, while Trout has fallen off a little as his team fell out of it, and you have a classic MVP to me.

Regardless of 'should', Trout will get the RotY and finish second in MVP voting, I think that's a guarantee at this point. Miggy winning the triple crown, or even coming a HR away if Hamilton or Dunn has a homer binge, will be enough on a playoff team for the real voters, no matter what you or I think.

[Imran Siddiqui]

RBIs are a distinctly overrated stat which has very little to bear on Wins. It is more a product of how good the people in front of you are at in getting on base. It's probably even more useless than OBP .

Especially when you consider Trout is the Angels' leadoff hitter (he also happens to be #1 in Runs Scored in the majors even though he didn't play a game in April).

[Imran Siddiqui]

You can of course suggest OBP for this stat instead of average

FWIW, Cabrera is 4th in the AL in OBP . Behind Joe Mauer, Prince Fielder, and Mike Trout.

[snoopy369]

IDK about statistical correlation, but RBIs matter rather a lot in terms of Wins. MVP is about who actually performed in the clutch, not "person most likely to perform well in a large sample size". I know clutch is not a real thing, but... it is nonetheless what MVP is. Who _did_ perform the best when needed to, to carry his team. Advanced stats can and should point out people who performed well in various ways - but the actual result _does_ matter whether or not it's a statistical anomaly or not.

[Imran Siddiqui]

IDK about statistical correlation, but RBIs matter rather a lot in terms of Wins.

This is an interesting statement .

If statistical correlation does not follow, then how does it mean a lot in terms of it .

[snoopy369]

RBIs are necessary for your team to win a game. If nobody gets an RBI, you probably lose (unless you're the white sox and have all of your runs scored on GIDP with the bases loaded and zero outs, for which they probably own the record for most occurrences in one season). Stats are fantastic at projecting future success, but frankly if somebody hits .400 on a .800 BABIP for a whole season, he wins my vote for best hitter season in recent memory, whether or not it's reproducible, and should get credit for having done so.

[SlowwHand]

Every year there's an outstanding rookie. There's hasn't been a triple crown winner in like 45 years.

I'm not going to argue about triples vs. home runs, since I already stated that it depends on circumstances; especially with someone who says RBI's are overrated.

[Imran Siddiqui]

RBIs are necessary for your team to win a game. If nobody gets an RBI, you probably lose (unless you're the white sox and have all of your runs scored on GIDP with the bases loaded and zero outs, for which they probably own the record for most occurrences in one season). Stats are fantastic at projecting future success, but frankly if somebody hits .400 on a .800 BABIP for a whole season, he wins my vote for best hitter season in recent memory, whether or not it's reproducible, and should get credit for having done so.

But who should get the value for that? You can't get an RBI if there is no one on base unless you hit a HR. So therefore shouldn't RBIs be divided between the two? Or rather, should we look at RBI% (how many RBIs you get compared to the potential RBIs you could recieve in every potentially at bat).

Furthermore, why penalize people who get on base, but bat in the #1 or #2 position?

[Fistandantilus]

The real difference to me is that Miggy hit 14 homers more than Trout and Trout stole 45 bases more.
What's the correlation between wins, HRs and SBs?

Is it better to have a guy who never steals but hits 14 HRs or a guy who never hits HRs but steals 45 bases? Which one contributes more to winning?

[SlowwHand]

14 HR's are at least 14 runs. 45 stolen bases aren't necessarily any runs.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well if you want to play that game, Trout is #1 in the AL in Runs Scored .

OBP has the greatest correlation with Runs. If you want to include everything you have more advanced metrics (Runs Created, Offensive Wins Above Replacement, etc).

I'm also not sure why we are so quick to ignore defense. Saving runs is just as important as creating them, right?

[snoopy369]

But who should get the value for that? You can't get an RBI if there is no one on base unless you hit a HR. So therefore shouldn't RBIs be divided between the two? Or rather, should we look at RBI% (how many RBIs you get compared to the potential RBIs you could recieve in every potentially at bat).

Furthermore, why penalize people who get on base, but bat in the #1 or #2 position?

I'm a white sox fan. Runners on base are **** useless if nobody drives them in. If the #1 or #2 position batters want to drive in runs they can bloody well drive themselves in

Anyway, i'm not interested in penalizing anybody. RBIs, HR, BA measure three different contributions to winning. BA measures getting hits, which is the old way of measuring what OBP now measures; sorry that it's the old way, but it does have value. Not nearly as interesting a story to note that Cabrera nearly won the Bill James Triple Crown but was fourth in OBP, is it? Either way, though, he got hits in a higher percentage of his at-bats than anybody else, #1 through #9 spot. On top of that, he drove in runs, and on top of that, he hit home runs. He would've been a great player this year from the #1 slot since he got a lot of hits, and he would've been great as 3/4/5 since he had plenty of power and drove in the people in front of him. That's what an MVP does. I won't disagree that Trout also did a lot of things well, but I think dismissing RBIs as useless is plain wrong in looking at how people actually did.

What are you going to do next, say Walter Payton's rushing yard records shouldn't have counted as anything because he needed his linemen to block in front of him?

[Guynemer]

Trout had the better overall season for the most part, I have no problem with him being MVP. However, he did miss around 15% of the season, which is a consideration.

The fact that Miggy has been better in August/September and Trout has fallen off carries no weight with me; wins in May and June count the same as wins in the last week of the season.

Honestly, 30 years from now, probably no one will remember who the 2012 AL MVP was. But they will remember a Triple Crown winner. Miggy doesn't need the MVP if he gets the TC.

[Jaguar]

Imran is right, snoopy is derp.